Scenes from a recent Rambling House.
It’s a slowish week, Celtically speaking, but that’s good because it gives us a chance to tell you a little more about a monthly evening of entertainment at the Irish Center called the Rambling House, which happens this coming Thursday night.
A “rambling house” is truly a piece of old Ireland. A rural County Kerry tradition, it was an informal evening of music, stories, jokes, and recitations usually held in the home of a local farmer. The performers weren’t professionals—just neighbors and friends who presented their “party piece,” acted as the seanchai (storyteller), fiddled, sang, or danced. Yes, it was Irish amateur hour, but it’s also the place where the traditions were passed along, the stories came alive, and a sense of community and closeness were forged.
I went to the first Rambling House, produced and hosted by WTMR 800-FM radio host, Marianne MacDonald, and got that same feeling of “home” I experienced when I was in Ireland. I like to attribute the sensation to some mystical form of ethnic memory, though I suspect it had more to do with the realization I had while sitting in my cousin’s kitchen in Ballyharry, County Donegal: What I thought of as my family’s own personal customs—sitting at the kitchen table for hours, talking and laughing and telling stories—were actually part of some larger set of traditions whose source I discovered at this other table, while sipping tea and talking to people I’d just met but with whom I share a few grandparents.
Even if you’ve never had this kind of experience, you’re sure to feel a closeness to your roots at the Irish Center’s Rambling House, which is scheduled for April 16 at 8 PM. As the old song goes: “Boul in, boul in and take a chair, Admission here is free, You’re welcome to the rambling house, to hear the seanchai.”
Check out our calendar for the loads of sessions on tap this week.
